The haunting, seemingly haunted Russian shtetl of The Light Ahead was created onthe same New Jersey farm on which Edgar G. Ulmer shot the pastoral Green Fields. Within its shadowy,Caligariesque setting, The Light Ahead is a love story of two beggars-the lame Fishke and the blindHodel-whose affair is thwarted by their position in life until, ironically, the demands of village superstitionbring them together in marriage. David Opatoshu and Helen Beverly are radiant in the lead roles. But TheLight Ahead-based on two stories by the nineteenth century social satirist Mendele Mocher S'forim (Mendlthe Bookseller, whose real name was S. Y. Abramovich)-is a portrait of life in a Jewish village that givesno measure to sentimentality. Rather, it recognizes the shtetl for what it is-an impoverished ghetto ofOdessa-and that no amount of piety or superstition can fill an empty stomach. This particular shtetl iscalled Glupsk (Foolstown). While the town elders, who have the time to be pious, pressure to use whatevermoney is in the coffers for religious activities, poor farmers argue for a hospital as a cholera epidemicmakes its way toward the village. Acting as arbitrator between the two groups is Mendele the Bookpeddler,the Tevye-like author-surrogate played by Isidore Cashier. An expert on things Jewish, but more, on thingshuman, he becomes the spokesman for fairness in the village. The film's blunt anti-clericism is epitomizedin a farmer's reply to an elder who upbraids him for his impious, beardless state: "Better a Jew without abeard than a beard without a Jew!" Made in 1939, The Light Ahead transcends its nineteenth centurysetting to speak of imminent issues: justice and, ultimately, hope.